Policy Makers, Politicians and Think Tanks frequently make assumptions about state education which are fundamentally flawed. The first is the assumption that schools - and by extension teachers – have sole responsibility for the academic achievement of children in their charge. The second is that OFSTED Quality of Teaching grades are a reflection of the teaching in a given school. There is clear evidence that Quality of Teaching grades are the same as the Overall Effectiveness grade given by OFSTED. Both are driven by (highly dubious analysis of) achievement data and are not altered by the observations inspectors make in the few hours they spend in schools before judging a school. Observations, which are extremely subjective, can show whatever the observer wishes to observe. As Professor Robert Coe says, ‘If your lesson is judged ‘Inadequate’ there is a 90% chance that a second observer would give a different rating.’ If an inspector wants to judge teaching to be a particular grade, they can. The grade inspectors give reflects the (dubious) data, not the quality of teaching. Most recently, Policy Exchange published Watching the Watchmen, in which authors Harriet Waldegrave and Jonathan Simons note that the ‘Achievement subgrade agrees most strongly with the overall grade, for both primaries and secondaries, followed very closely by the Quality of Teaching subgrade.’ (p26) Watching the watchmen includes the following graphs to bring this relationship home:

OFSTED Lead Inspector Mary Myatt writes on her blog: ‘the quality of teaching judgement links closely to the judgement on achievement. If a ‘good’ or even ‘outstanding’ lesson does not lead to good or better progress over time, then it follows that the quality of teaching is likely to require improvement. And the flip side of this is that if a lesson is observed which requires improvement but the progress is good, then the judgement on the quality of teaching over time will be good’. The data rules the judgement, not the teaching itself. David Didau sums up the feeling of most of those working in schools when he says that ’the commonly held view amongst most teachers and school leaders is that a lead inspector makes a preliminary judgement based on a school’s RAISE online data and then turns up in classrooms looking for confirmation of a decision that has already been made.’

Where an education commentator makes the assumption that OFSTED Quality of Teaching grades are a reflection of the teaching in a given school, any case, policy or commentary built on this assumption is fundamentally flawed.

Yet more criticism of Ofsted's Quality of Teaching grade, with a call for it to be removed completely: http://www.civitas.org.uk/education/PTG:

"In addition, significant research has shown that graded lesson observations are an imperfect science, as more often than not observation judgements do not correspond with the impact of teaching on long-term pupil achievement.

This finding suggests that Ofsted inspectors are not capable of grading the quality of teaching within a school in a satisfactory fashion, as such a judgement is both subjective and unreliable. It is the recommendation of this report that the ‘Quality of teaching’ grade be removed from Section 5 Ofsted inspections, so that schools are judged according to the three remaining criteria: ‘Achievement of pupils’; ‘Behaviour and safety of pupils’ and ‘Leadership and management’." (p7).